


The House Is

by lemonsharks



Category: Hänsel und Gretel | Hansel and Gretel (Fairy Tale)
Genre: Creepy, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-10-04
Updated: 2016-10-04
Packaged: 2018-08-19 13:30:30
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 313
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8210299
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/lemonsharks/pseuds/lemonsharks
Summary: The witch is a spider; the house is a web.





	

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Healy](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Healy/gifts).



_You see what you want to see_.

The house is made of cake and candy. 

The house has an open door and a warm hearth. 

The house rises in spires above the trees, all crenelations and smooth-worn stone.

You see what you _want_ to see. 

Welcome and warmth, protection, what you _want_ is what you _see_. 

She is cold, most nights, turning the coals in her fire with a poker. Calling a little more light from the embers. She is cold, and she sees a gateway, sees an entrance, sees splintered floor covered in ash, the house for what it truly is beneath the gauze of woven spells and wishes. 

And she hungers, more beast than woman, more thing than song, a worry at the back of a mother’s mind when she says, _“Don’t go far.”_

Don’t go. 

Far.

 

The house is made of cake and candy and the shadows wrapped around her whisper like crepe and crackling paper wrappers. Children are tender, children are simple, children feed her fire and glow with the light of untapped _potential_. 

Might-bes. 

Children see a house of cake and candy in a world that leaves them crumbs, and she watches from behind a window paned in oiled paper, cloudy-ancient, dusty, dull. Their outlines thin as they break pieces from the wall. 

_“Eat your fill, loves,”_ she says, words a crackle and a whisper, leaves and wind. 

She stirs the coals to life, fills her cup with promises, smears ash on the hem of her skirt. Like a spider lurking, waiting, she draws the latch-string open and calls the children in, into warmth and sweet and the feel of their hearts beneath of leathered fingertips. 

_“Come in,”_ she says, and they follow her voice as though she has bells in her throat, new and silver, tink-tink-tinking, and they hear what they want to hear. 

Tonight, she’ll feast.


End file.
